From killing fields to court

The woman was charged with shoplifting two bandages. Unable to understand the finer points of English — was "non-adhering dressing" what the doctor had prescribed for her husband? — she had taken two of the bandages from the box, she says, and had stood by the store's front door, waiting for her husband to return from an errand so she could consult him. That's when a store clerk had called the police.

Now the woman, a 40-year-old Cambodian, is in Salt Lake City Justice Court, where the city prosecutor has just offered to reduce her "class B misdemeanor retail theft" to an "infraction-level offense." If she agrees, she won't face the possibility of jail time, but she'll have to pay a $150 fine if found guilty, her attorney explains. Once again the woman's limited English is of no help. That's where her court-appointed interpreter, Cambodian native Kunthea Kelly, steps in.

In her darkest days in Cambodia, Kelly too was caught stealing. She was perhaps 15, although at the time the days and years had all begun to run together. Assigned to a forced labor camp by the Khmer Rouge, she was hungry all the time. One night, nearly crazy with hunger, she tiptoed to the camp's garden, squatted next to a vine and picked one cucumber. Immediately, though, she was caught. She was roped to a tree, her hands tied behind her back, and a plastic bag was placed over her head. Her life was spared, she says, by a young soldier who walked by and said, "Let her go."

These days, as an interpreter, sometimes Kelly is assigned to Juvenile Court, where she translates for the parents of young Cambodian-Americans who have stolen a car, maybe, or stolen money from their parents. In cases like these, the children speak English and the parents don't, so the parents are faced not only with a legal situation they don't understand but a teenager who has become equally as foreign.

Macromedia Flash file Listen to Kunthea Kelly — her story, her voice Requires Macromedia Flash Player.

These are the times when Kelly will try to sound a warning, even though that's not part of her job description. "You live in a free country, with so many opportunities," she tells these wayward young people, who often look at her with sullen faces when she tells them not to squander their lives. "Take advantage of this free country," she tells them. "Be somebody your parents will be proud of."